How To Improve Amazon Kindle Sales

^^^ Yes exactly. You MUST build your author brand whether you are selling fiction or non-fiction. Either that or you have to put out a crap ton of books. But building your author brand will be beneficial in many ways because when you do, you are getting customers into your "sales funnel" and you can sell them more books or maybe even have a newsletter to sell them other related products etc..

This way you are owning the customer and not just depending on Amazon to send them your way. Depending on a third party platform for your sales (whether it be Amazon, google, squidoo or whatever) is not a smart business move.

Not at all. You do need to promote.

Write a series of books. Each one will help promote the other. My books were recently featured in a national woman's magazine which resulted in hundreds of visitors to my site and sales. I was approached by the magazine. They saw my books on Amazon. Having a series really helped with this.

Consider enrolling your book in KDP Select where you can give your book away for free then share the free book on sites that promote free books. If people like your free book they may buy your other one.

Develop relationships in groups etc. where you can promote your book. Start a blog with an email sign up so you can share new releases etc.

Write excellent books so that people will buy all of your books and will share them with others

Some might, but for most books the days of that happening are over.

You are not alone, that is the one mistake that I've seen hundreds of authors make. You need to build an "author brand" - I've said that so much in this forum I should trademark it lol, but it holds true.

All good advice thus far.

However let me chime in with my two cents.

One potentially effective strategy is to contact relevant, interested parties on Facebook, Linkedin or Twitter and ask them what they think of your book.

Please note the above strategy is only effective if your book is highly original or amusing in some way.

I could go into more detail on this method but you can figure it out.

Another slightly greyhatish method is buying a domain like bestsciencefiction.com or something like that, and reviewing your science-fiction book on your own website (you can of course get someone else to review it and then publish it to your site). Then simply add the blurb containing a complimentary line or two (if applicable) from your site's review to the Amazon description for the product. For example:

" Fantastic...Mesmerizing...best book ever (you get the picture)"
bestsciencefiction.com

There are various sites out there where you can promote your book or ask for a review too. But for me the most effective method was coming up with a highly original concept and contacting various people who I thought the concept might appeal to and get them to promote. I think these people are what Malcolm Gladwell calls "connectors" - insofar as that they have a lot of influence. Find these people, but more importantly create a product that will appeal to them.

It depends. Does one naturally lead into the other? Could either naturally lead into the other (going both ways)? If yes, you have a two-book series.

By the way, could the second line in your sig also apply (at least to the kinkier set)?

"The book should be first, marketing should be second."

No way. You should be marketing your book before it is even finished. Blogging about it, asking others what they would like to read in a book, giving away a chapter for free, etc.
This way you can start getting sales immediately on release.

Reviews are definitely where it's at. If you can get some, you will see a difference in sales.

What's the price? Too low and nobody will think it's of any value. Too high and everybody thinks you're crazy.

Is there a physical version of the book on Amazon as well? I've noticed kindle sales improve if there is a physical version of the book available on Amazon too. I think, subconsciously, people believe it's more of an 'authentic' book if there is a physical version. Use Createspace.

Enroll in Kindle Select and offer the book for free for all 5 days in a row. Do this as close to the launch date as you can so when all of your other marketing techniques start working, you're not giving away a ton of books. Also, all of the free books will increase your rank in amazon. You can take a screen shot of this rank and use it to promote the book.

This is the biggest way to get sales. One point to make though is that a purchase review is 10X stronger than just having someone write a review. and you do not want the same people always reviewing all your books.

The other 2 big ones are write a compelling description. And make sure your cover stands out in a crowd. Look at the top 10 books in the niche and you will see their descriptions and their covers are A-1

These three things are how you get traffic and sales on amazon. It is that simple I promise you.

1. Great Cover Graphics
2. Compelling Description
3. Reviews. purchase reviews if possible.

I see about 20 sales a week per book when all of these are perfect. I have simply changed the cover graphics and taken a book with no sales to 20 a week.

Good Luck

The value of KDP promotions have dropped dramatically. It does little to nothing for your ranking once it is over. Really, the only thing I use it for is to increase sales on my other books that are not free. Even then, it is hit or miss.

What you really need to do is promote. I don't mean just manually either. Pay people to promote your book to accounts with lots of twitter followers for FB fans. Stuff like that makes a difference.